How do I increase the quality of crops?

[grimmlin]

I have thoroughly looked through the wiki, as well as through these forums but i cant get a definitive answer as to how to increase crop quality.
Is it using the randomized +5/-5 that was going on in world 8?
I have planted a single line of q8 hemp, with 40 farming, will it naturally drift up to the limit of my farming skill or do I have to do something special?
How many generations of plants can i reasonably expect to get them up to q 40?
And lastly when I played the game pre-hafen soil quality was a limiting factor of crop quality, does that not matter now, outside of trees?

[AwesomeOwl]

Spread your crop out. Split amount of seeds u have in 3-5 groups and plant one group every 1-2 hours
Then replant withever crop raises the most in quality.
That at least is how i do it.

[TheLoli]

Close. I do 2-3 groups myself, and no more than 3. With druidic rite your harvests (excluding things like some trellis crops) produce enough for 3 plantings per crop harvested, so having 3 max is ideal in my opinion. You also should spread it more than 1 - 2 hours apart. I do about 5-6, because sometimes the rolls wont change even if you wait 2-4 hours. Then, like stated, just use your best seeds for the replanting and do whatever with the rest (feed to your animals, cook, etc). Rinse and repeat. x3

[Glorthan]

The spread is -2 to +5, so no micromanagement is required to bring it towards your farming cap. If you always replant even on negative rolls, it's an average gain of 1.5q/generation, if you keep the old and don't replant negative it's close to 2.

Multiple plants is if you want to maximize your quality gain, but the difference is fairly minimal compared to just keeping the old.

Soil quality doesn't matter. Instead this world they added invisible "growth speed nodes", so your carrots may be fast and your poppies slow, for example. Generally speaking it just means some of your neighbour's crops may increase slightly faster than yours, so you could trade every so often. Kingdom buffs make a huge difference for wheat, flax, grapes and pumpkin growth timers too.